The invention relates to tiles for use as wall and floor coverings which have hard flat or profiled surfaces.
Such tiles usually consist of earthenware, that is, clay or stoneware, and are utilized as face bricks or glazed stoneware plates particular in industrial buildings and stables. Stoneware tiles, especially ceramic tiles which are first fired and surface-glazed in a second pass through a kiln, are utilized in wet rooms, in commercial kitchens, in food stores, in dairies, in bakeries, etc., that is, they are utilized wherever ease of cleaning is important. The advantage of such kiln-fired tiles is that they are very hard, frost resistant, insensitive to acids and long wearing. Usually the tiles are supported on thin layers of mortar, utilizing also special water-based binding agents and epoxy cement. Such mounting requires a suitable base, usually a carefully prepared concrete floor or another smooth subfloor since the thin cement layers usually do not or do not fully permit equalization of unevenness in the subfloor.
The use of ceramic tiles in living areas is generally very limited, especially because a tile floor or wall is always cold or rather is always felt to be cold and therefore considered to be uncomfortable.
In order to utilize the advantages of tiles without the disadvantages, tiled floors have been built which included heating means in the floor. For this purpose, thick layers of concrete subfloors with heating pipes embedded therein have been built, onto which the tiles were cemented. Such work, however, is time-consuming and expensive. Repair of such floor heaters is furthermore practically impossible. Nevertheless, such a floor is not only comfortably warm but provides, at the same time, the heat needed for heating the room in a very good manner.
The disadvantages of such tile floors are therefore:
1. the expensive and time-consuming manner of mounting; PA0 2. the low subjective temperature of the tiles (as a result of their high heat conductivity).